Best way to have push email?

[Lcmv]

I only have Gmail on my phone and the one thing I hate the most about it is the lack of notifications. Well, there are notifications to some extent, but they are terrible. They seem to act at random, notifying some messages and not others, and always notifying some considerable time after they were received. I really would like to have some instant notification for a few selected senders. How can I achieve that? Using some other email application? Which ones? Coupling Gmail with some kind of push service? Which one? How?

All help appreciated.

 

[SpookDroid]

Definitely something wrong with either the phone connection or the GMail Settings/app. Most users (myself included) get notifications just as instantly as you would on a computer. So let's check some things out:
1) Connection. Make sure your phone is online and data isn't being throttled (i.e. aggressive Sleep mode or battery saver). Also that the SYNC option on your phone is active or it may disable push notifications.
2) DnD is not active (or a routine or automation isn't activating/de-activating it, causing you to miss said notifications).
3) Check your GMail settings to make sure that notifications are properly set for the account (i.e. set to notify for each message as it arrives and not 'lumped in', etc.)
4) Clear the GMail app's cache. You can clear data, too, and that'd be my second step to try if the first doesn't work, but this will force you to re-login to your Google account most likely as well as re-configure your Settings.
5) Ensure the GMail app isn't being put to sleep or has background data restricted.

Hope any of these help!